Stephen Clark Foster (politician, 1820)

Stephen Clark Foster

Stephen Clark Foster (* 1820 in Machias , Washington County , Maine , †  January 28, 1898 ) was an American politician . Between 1848 and 1856 he was mayor of Los Angeles several times .

Life

Stephen Foster graduated from Yale College in 1840 . He practiced as a doctor in Missouri for several years before moving to Los Angeles, California in 1847 . He had previously participated in the Mexican-American War . When he got to Los Angeles. the city, like all of California, had just been ceded by Mexico to the United States. Government was in the hands of the military. A legal system did not yet exist and crime was correspondingly high. That was also connected with the gold rush of that time. Foster joined a militia-like force that cracked down on this crime. In the meantime, he was also a member of a lynch mob.

Even before the city of Los Angeles was officially founded in 1850, Foster was appointed mayor of the town, which then had a population of around 1,600, by Military Governor Richard Barnes Mason . He still carried the Mexican title Alcalde . He held this office between January 1, 1848 and May 21, 1849. In some lists he is the first mayor of Los Angeles. Other sources, however, only begin with the mayors after the city was founded in 1850. During his tenure, he had to deal with the problems of crime. In 1849 Foster took part as a delegate to the constituent assembly of the future state of California. He became a member of the Democratic Party . In 1850 he sat on the Los Angeles City Council and in 1851 also in the California Senate , where he remained for two years.

In the following years he was mayor of Los Angeles three times: between May 4, 1854 and January 13, 1855, January 25, 1855 and May 9, 1855, and from May 7 to September 22, 1856. The interruption in January 1855 was related to his already mentioned action in a lynching. In this context, he resigned, but was immediately re-elected to office. His main tasks as mayor were the development and expansion of the city's infrastructure as well as the fight against crime. In September 1856 he finally resigned in order to manage the property for his brother-in-law. Even so, he was district chairman in Los Angeles County between 1856 and 1859 . After that, he no longer appeared politically. He died on January 28, 1898.

Web links

• Stephen Clark Foster in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• The Political Graveyard
• The Mayors of Los Angeles
• Stephen Clark Foster in nndb (English)